How I Feel About the Election

I’m Umair Haque, and this is The Issue: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported publication. Our job is to give you the freshest, deepest, no-holds-barred insight about the issues that matter most.

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The election. How do you feel about it? Excited? I’d bet…not. I suspect most of us are somewhere between anxious and exasperated.

Me? Here’s how I feel about it. Underwhelmed, maybe. There are die-hards on both sides who are gung-ho about their chosen candidates. And that’s OK. But I imagine there are also a lot of us, caught in the middle, of what feels a whole lot like a failed system. And it’s hard to get too excited about that.

And that’s me. I like Coach Tim, I like Kamala. I’ve even softened on Donald Trump, which is kind of funny. But in all this, I’m…unexcited.

Because I can see what happens next. Which goes something like this.

America’s is going to remain destabilized. In a kind of cyclical way. Into the foreseeable future.

That’s the real takeaway of this election, which I wouldn’t say is going well. Would you? Anybody much feeling particularly happy about any of this?

Trumpism isn’t going to go away with Trump, precisely because its roots lie deeper, and have set in harder. It exists for a reason—a very real one, which at this point, even I have sympathies with. This election isn’t going to…fix the maddening, broken politics which have come to plague America. The Dems, too are just as entrenched, having learned next to nothing from Trumpism’s rise.

And so here I am, and I think many people share this sense, of being underwhelmed.

Is anybody going to fix anything around here? Hey, how are these jokers going to help me?

The Statistic That Explains Everything Nobody Wants to Talk About

I want to focus on a statistic that more or less explains everything. Yes, really, I know, I know. It’s kind of shocking to me that nobody ever talks about, and so here it is, sort of the elephant, or maybe Godzilla, in the political theater, around which pundits and advisors and candidates perform this weird kabuki ritual, a feel-good charade.

Median incomes for men in America are lower today than they were in 1979.

In 1979.

That’s almost fifty years ago.

I didn’t make this up.

This is a fact.

Our side is supposed to like facts, remember? It’s supposed to be the “reality-based one,” whatever that even means anymore. Our. Side. Is. Supposed. Not. To. Ignore. The. Facts. Wait, am I a Republican now? I’m getting there, I guess.

Because “our” side won’t talk about this statistic, which, like I said, explains everything. Won’t acknowledge it, admit it, even look at it.

Now. I focus on men for a reason. Women started from a very low base, and so while there’s been tepid growth in their incomes, not much, but some, a tiny amount, a few percent, over the last fifty years, that starts from a low base. And it still reflects a very real and pretty large gender gap closing.

So it’s not really so much a gendered statistic I’m discussing, but rather, just a statistic, the key one, pointing squarely to a certain reality.

You know what that statistic says, because we talk about it all the time.

The point is what it means, vis a vis what Democrats want to do. Which is…not much.

They certainly don’t have any vision, much less agenda, to reverse this long-term macro-trend: a half century of stagnation.

What they’re offering instead is sort of what I’ve called the Minimum Viable Future, or Minimum Viable Politics, if you want. So they want to give people a $6K tax break for having a kid. That’s nice, it’s “not nothing,” as we say. But that doesn’t even cover a year’s childcare. It’s a paltry amount, which in economics, we’d call a “signal,” meaning that it has more symbolic value than actual value.

It lets the Democrats say: hey, look at us! We’re doing stuff! See, check us out!

But this isn’t enough.

They don’t have a vision or plan to reverse the biggest macro-trend in American, which is half a century of stagnation. Not even remotely something close to one. They’re tinkering at the edges of a broken social contract, not making anything close to the sorts of fundamental reforms necessary to spark genuine prosperity again, much less protect democracy in a serious way, which we’ll come to.

They’re the Minimum Viable Guys. At least they’re not the fascists! That’s the selling point.

Pretty bleak stuff, if you ask me. Sort of like if you had a restaurant and the Big Idea was that it wasn’t selling rancid food. Well, if there’s nobody else in town, I guess…

Which is the game here, and why the system feels so broken.

How Stagnation Ignites Cycles of Authoritarian Collapse

Now let’s come to Trump.

The thing—the crazy, maddening, and sort of insane thing—is that Trump is the guy who kind of gets this statistic, and what it means. He understands that times have been incredibly tough for the working and middle class, and he empathizes with them, offers them his support, tells them they can be Great Again, the whole nine yards.

Of course, it’s the same old game—it’s those peoples’ fault, those others, those unwanted ones. But here, I have to admit, even I think there’s an issue with too much unchecked low-quality immigration—we’ll discuss that another time, though. The point I suppose is that scapegoating is scapegoating.

And so we’re trapped in the middle of this insanity.

One side understands the problem: the macro trend of long-run stagnation. But offers up pretty poor solutions.

The other one doesn’t even acknowledge the problem, and pretends that everything’s basically fine, and giving people stuff like not-even-to-cover-a-years-childcare is Major Progress.

Where does that leave us?

I’ll tell you where it leaves me: unenthused.

Because, like I said, I can tell you what happens next. We’ve discussed some of the above before, but now let’s go further.

What happens next? Let’s say the Democrats win. And I’m not saying they will. I wouldn’t put money on it, but we’ll discuss that next time, for now, let’s stick to the future and macro trends.

What’s not going to happen is that the macro trend of stagnation goes away.

Instead, it’s just going to…roll on.

Maybe incomes will go up by a tiny, tiny amount—doesn’t matter, really, that’s just signal in the noise.

Remember—they don’t have a vision or agenda at this level. It’s at several levels lower, the stuff of minor-league tax breaks and so forth. It’s not anything close to “we’re going to lift the incomes of 90% of society by 50% over the next decade.”

And what does more stagnation portend?

More destabilization.

More authoritarianism.

Because the roots of social collapses of this kind are always in stagnation.

Always.

Now, I’ve explained this before, but I’m going to do it again, because in an essay like this, it’s crucial that you really get why.

Here’s a pie. Your slice isn’t growing anymore. It’s shrinking. Maybe the overall pie is growing, but so what? It’s in a weird lopsided way, just for that one guy, who’s eating all of that entire side, leaving you, and millions like you, to….

What do you do when your slice of the pie is shrinking? You have to begin to fight with everyone else. Just to keep it the same as it was before.

There’s no other way.

This is what’s called in economics a “negative sum game,” meaning that the total, or the “sum,” is shrinking.

And this is why societies implode into authoritarianism. People have to fight one another for their slice of the pie, just to keep it the same. No longer does hard work suffice, pay off, get you there. Social norms don’t hold. The peace can’t be kept. Everything frays and decays. Relations of comity and community turn to spite and enmity. Politics becomes fixated on who can take what from whom, whether through scapegoating, purification, or cleansing.

Do you see how stagnation destabilizes societies? This is a story as old as time—it’s what happened in Rome. Caesar gave people, famously, bread and circuses, and it worked, but it worked precisely because stagnation had cast its wicked spell, and frayed the Republic’s confidence, optimism, comity, and institutions.

I really, really want you to understand this, because the mechanism matters.

When Establishments Fail, What Happens to Societies?

If we understand this mechanism—how stagnation destabilizes societies—then we can see into the future.

Which looks like this. The Democrats don’t do much about stagnation, or at least, offering the Minimum Viable Politics they do, not nearly enough. What happens next? Stagnation just goes right on breeding discontent, fraying bonds, erasing confidence, and tearing society apart. The pie goes right on shrinking for the average person, and they have to continue to fight off everyone else just to keep their slice the same.

And that is how movements like Trumpism come to be.

What all this predicts is that nothing much is going to change anytime soon. If the Dems win, in a few years, it’ll all…happen…all over again. Maybe if Trump is gone, the figurehead will be JD Vance, or any number of other contenders—so what? That doesn’t matter. The point is for you to understand the future, and what shapes it, and in this case, what our little analysis tells us is that destabilization is going to just go on, because…

Nobody is fixing the problem.

And that’s why I’m unenthused. Unexcited. I think a lot of people are, because they have this sense, intuitively, even if they can’t use all the jargon and concepts I did, which, to be frank, are unimportant, the point is just to understand it.

The point isn’t that I don’t care about women’ rights or minorities or anything of the kind—wrong, I do. It’s that it’s going to happen all over again, two, four years from now, four years from then, and so this threat will just remain ever-present, until we solve the problem of stagnation, and in that sense, this is all pretty…groan with me…useless.

Yes, it buys you a little time, but that’s a pretty low bar, when you’re still on the road straight to hell. The point is to get the hell off that road.

So here we are.

Neither party seems to care very much, or offer a compelling vision for this central question: “how are we going to raise incomes, which have stagnated for half a century, by 10, 30, 50%, over the next decade, for 90% of society?”

If anything, I think that Trump cares more about that question than the Dems. Which is a sorry and funny thing to have to say, but hey, do you want me to lie to you? I know, don’t answer that—I probably should. Go ahead and chuckle, but at least Trump is concerned with growth, and no, growth isn’t automatically a bad thing, though of course this form of carbon-fueled growth is, which of course brings us back to Trump’s many, many flaws, all of which leave us right back at square one.

Uninspired.

What do you do when a politics fails this badly?

You see, what shocks me, and it really does, is that nobody will even talk about this statistic. Nobody. I turn on CNN, and there’s a rotating cast of characters, pundits, advisors, campaign managers, surrogates, blah, blah blah—and not once have I ever heard this issue mentioned. Same for the Post, the Times, and everywhere else.

I think it’s clear by now that the establishment doesn’t care. Genuinely. It doesn’t want to care, couldn’t care less, doesn’t want to hear it, plugs its ears with its finely manicured fingers, and that’s why Trump is still right where he is, to be painfully blunt with you.

And in that sense, what’s unfolding before us is a game. They want our votes, and they want our affections, even, but mostly for the sake of their own power. They don’t actually intend to fix anything much. They intend to do as little as they can, and stay in power as long as they can, and I think, sadly, that’s true in a sense for both sides, even if, yes, here, I’ll cheer it right along you, let’s roar it together, at least the Democrats aren’t the fascists!

It’s a game. It’s a charade. It’s kabuki played out before Godzilla in the room, so that we don’t notice Godzilla in the room, tearing our lives apart. All of which, if you fall for it, I imagine, makes you the fool.

I don’t mean to sound so negative. These are terrible things to have to say. But hey, this is the business, the job, understanding the future, reading the tea leaves.

It’s not a warning. I don’t do those anymore. It’s just an observation.

What’s this election going to achieve? Not much. And that’s in the best case scenario. In the worst one, well, you’ve already imagined that, so let’s not dwell on it. It just sets up another cycle of destabilization. Which is sort of sad, and kind of pathetic, because hey, call me an idealist, call me a fool, call me whatever you like, but I think we all deserve better than this game, where nothing changes, except for the worse, and that threat is used to sort of whip us into line, or else.

Hey, at least they’re not the…

See that trendline of stagnation? It didn’t care in Rome, it didn’t care in Germany, and it doesn’t care now. The point is to change it, or else, eventually—do I really have to finish that sentence?

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